American Values, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #315 | @MDWorld
Do you remember high school? To be specific, do you remember any of the truly childish stuff you did in high school? Yeah, weren’t we cute back in those hallowed days when America still had a sense of perspective?
Part of the experience of being a kid is that they make mistakes. We all make mistakes, we all made a lot of dumb mistakes during our high school years, and now – evidently – we all live in glass houses behind a large pile of stones.
Case in point. Last week three students briefly, as in for between 30 seconds and one minute, wore Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods to their high school hockey game. The kids were supporting their team, the Red River North Dakota Roughriders. They were poking fun at a tradition that encourages fans to wear all-white garb to important playoff games, of which this was one.
Back in 1987 the fans of the original Winnipeg Jets (now the Phoenix Coyotes, not to be confused with the current Winnipeg Jets) wore all-white in support of their team in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. This stunt continued and has spread to local college and high school hockey. According to their principal Kristopher Arason, Red River High fans are supposed to wear a different color for each of the three days of their state tournament. This was the second game; the color of the day for the first game was black and, no, these dolts did not show up in blackface.
The three were caught by a cellphone camera and Tweeted across the universe. Principal Arason defensively stated “This behavior is not a representation of our school or student body” and that “appropriate action is being taken.”
This gave my Uh-Oh Sense a migraine.
I have a hard time believing this childish nonsense was an attack on the black community. Less than one percent of the entire state population is black. In fact, American Indians and native Alaskans (Inuits, etc.) outnumber blacks five-to-one. It’s hard to imagine most North Dakotan high schoolers have had a lot of personal experience with black folk, at least those not in uniform. These were high school kids doing the stupid things high school kids do. They thought it was funny. I suspect they’ve reconsidered that point.
But because today we hide our cowardly inability to raise our own children and demand their caretakers deploy the ugly and brain-dead concept of zero-tolerance (which is exactly the same as zero-intelligence), it is possible that these kids are going to be punished in some major, life-affecting way. Perhaps they’ll be expelled. Maybe they’ll only be suspended and have to serve that year of schooling over. Either way, they can kiss any chance of getting into a decent college goodbye.
That is an extremely high price to pay for children acting childishly. And, as long-time readers might recall, I say this as the child of a parent who was burned out of his house in Indianapolis by the Ku Klux Klan. I was a witness to a major Klan rally right here in Connecticut in 1986, complete with hooded horses. I know the terror suggested by the costume.
I also know the terror of being a teenager. I ask Principal Arason and his cohorts and all the people grabbing their fifteen minutes of fame in their self-righteous indignation to stop for a bit of perspective. These kids weren’t in the road show of Birth of a Nation. As they sang in The Mikado, let the punishment fit the crime.
One more thing. Kids, you’ve got a cellphone, right? Well, so does everybody else.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check the website above for times. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
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February 25th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Having been suspended from high school about a hundred years ago because my gym clothes were stolen and I therefore could not suit up for the all important gym class, I suspect that at least where I went to high school the penalty for dressing like a clansman at a school event would have been fairly severe. I was later suspended for writing a satirical editorial in the school paper about the dangers of a new drug called “P.E.” (Yes, I had a problem with the athletic establishment.) Since I only applied to mediocre colleges, my suspensions did not seriously impair my ability to attend the college of my choice.
February 25th, 2013 at 2:29 pm
It seems like getting into a “good” school (as if) is more difficult these days than it was back before Halley’s Comet last passed us by. I’m not at all certain why: with what they’re charging and for what they’re giving in exchange (what we used to call a “high school education”), they should take in any sucker with a daddy rich and stupid enough to pay the freight.
Maybe I should write about this. I’m tired of holding back. What was it Bob Dylan said? “Twenty years of schooling and you’re flipping burgers at Hardees.” Something like that.
My vengeance on my high school physical education practitioners was more sublime: I became sports editor of my high school paper, and prep sports writer for the local paper just prior to my senior year. AMAZING how fast those teachers’ attitudes shifted.
And that was, perhaps, the most valuable lesson I learned in high school.
February 25th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
The top schools are heavily endowed and don’t care so much about whether or not you can pay the freight. They have a good deal of scholarship money available for students that meet their fairly rigorous standards. If you have the cash, have reasonable grades, and aren’t a convicted child molester, you can get into many mid-level schools, particularly many well-known state universities. If you don’t have the cash, they will happily hook you up with an onerous student loan deal, and then tell you it’s going to take at least five years for you to graduate — but they won’t tell you that until sometime in your second or third year.
February 25th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Why will it take at least five years to graduate? From your syntax, I infer that if there were no loans involved it would only take four. Is that true? Sounds like the universities are using accountants from the hospitals.
February 25th, 2013 at 3:45 pm
“Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift.”
from Subterranean Homesick Blues.
February 25th, 2013 at 6:59 pm
As long as you’re not on a scholarship that results in the college not getting money, they’ll try to make it difficult for you to graduate in four years because another year means 25% more money for the college. So it doesn’t matter if you have the cash or take out loans, as long as the school gets their money they’ll try to soak you for all they can get. This is what we ran into at Purdue, and I’ve heard similar stories from others. The college advisers will give you highly misleading advice that results in requiring one or two additional semesters to graduate. They’re also very evasive on accepting credits from community colleges. Since a lot of people are trying to save money by doing the first two years at a community college, regular four year schools say, “Sure! We’ll take you as a transfer student.” But be very suspicious if they don’t tell you up front exactly what they are accepting as transfer credits.
And yes, it’s a lot like hospital billing practices. It’s all about the money.
February 25th, 2013 at 7:41 pm
Yeah, George. I changed it to flipping burgers cuz that’s what a lot of grads are doing.
And I picked on Hardee’s NOT because its the worst major fast food chain in the Galaxy, but for its number of syallibals.
February 25th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Rick — it looks like the football program is the most honest part of the university cash machine.
And we wonder why so many young adults seem ethically challenged.
February 26th, 2013 at 7:24 am
I have zero tolerance for high school kids who think good pranks are destroying someones home or gang raping a drunken girl then placing those crimes on Youtube.
For that sort of shit, put those assholes and their parents in jail.
Those kids that put on those robes? Assholes who most likely laughed so hard when they came up with the idea they just KNEW everyone would get the joke. ‘They do those kind of jokes on Family Guy every week and it’s funny’ said the kid who is now being called the one with the idea.
Making them pay for the rest of their lives for just being stupid is just plain stupid.
February 26th, 2013 at 7:38 am
Yup. You don’t need a Weber Grill to know which way the wind blows.
February 26th, 2013 at 10:08 am
I tend to leave discussions like this to tose who have first-hand knowledge. Same reason I go to a female doc.
Golden Boy and MOTU, I will follow your lead regarding interpretation and appropriate outrage.
RE: Universities – The unspoken goal of recuiting is based on two hopes: The forecast of the alumae-prospect’s ability to contribute to the school’s endowment post-graduation, or to make the school famous-by-association from future accomplishments of the graduate-prospect.
Education is a business. Get the lambskin and THEN pursue higher learning.
February 26th, 2013 at 10:17 am
Whitney:
Regarding universities: For active academic recruitment programs, what you say is probably more or less true — but in general, for the vast majority of students at the vast majority of schools, the only issue is: How much cash can we get from you right now? State schools — within the SAME state — actually compete with each other for students by offering irrelevant non-academic amenities like climbing walls and water parks.
February 26th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
Mike,
First time reading that anecdote. Such an experience and/or recounting of same from a family history aspect is indeed life impacting.
My reaction is that these kids had time to plan and accessorize this little stunt. That implies malicious intent. Doubt that their lives will be ruined, but I totally think that any near term consequences will be very…educational.
For me, the encouraging aspect about this story is that their peers actually demanded that they remove the robes and hoods. The spark of hope remains.